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After Trump Win, Teachers Toss Their Lesson Plans, Give Students the Floor

Chalkbeat Staff — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

“Doomed.” “Baffled.” “Scared.” “Happy.” “I don’t care.” “We are so cooked.”

Those were the reactions to the presidential election result that students scrawled on a white board Wednesday morning inside Joshua Ferguson’s 11th grade government class at Ypsilanti Community High School in Michigan.

Before he knew that former President Donald Trump had won a second term, Ferguson thought he would do a lesson on disinformation in politics. Instead, he gave students room to talk. The most important piece of this lesson, he said, was for his students to feel safe and heard.

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“I think that’s my job as a teacher,” he said.

Educators across the country awakened Wednesday to the , then headed into school buildings where students were feeling everything from elation to shock to despair. Some had carefully scripted lesson plans at the ready. Others, like Ferguson, scrapped what they prepared and simply listened.

For civics and social studies teachers who had been monitoring the 2024 presidential election, Wednesday presented both a pedagogical challenge – and opportunity. Chalkbeat reporters fanned out to schools across the country to see how teachers approached this monumental day.

This story was reported by Caroline Bauman, Gabrielle Birkner, Hannah Dellinger, Jessie Gomez, Dale Mezzacappa, Amelia Pak-Harvey, Carly Sitrin, and Alex Zimmerman.

‘Why do people keep voting for Trump?’

Ahead of his 7:30 a.m. social studies class Wednesday, teacher John Winters had prepared a worksheet to spur conversation.

“As you know, [fill in the blank] has been elected as the next U.S. President,” the sheet read. “Please share your thoughts, feelings, concerns, questions, etc.”

His students at Philadelphia’s Murrell Dobbins Career & Technical Education High School didn’t need much prompting.

“He IS a convicted felon and should’ve never been allowed to run ever again,” wrote one student.

People “don’t want to see a girl/woman be the president,” wrote another.

“Why do people keep voting for Trump? Especially people that he doesn’t even like and is racist towards?” still another wrote.

The responses conveyed dismay and fear among some at the 800-student technical school, which is 89% Black and located in the city’s lowest income ZIP code.

At the end of the class, one junior held back to talk to Winters. Anxiety, even fear, was written all over his face as he struggled for words.

He asked a series of questions, like how many bills a president could pass and how an impeached president could be elected again. Winters answered but sensed there was something larger the boy wanted to know.

“I was born here, but I’m scared for my parents,” he said. “They’re from Haiti. It’s bad there right now.”

Winters reminded him that strongly Democratic Philadelphia has been a sanctuary city, meaning it doesn’t always cooperate with the federal government in enforcing immigration law. He told the young man to clarify with his parents their status. But then, reluctantly, he added: “I can’t lie, it’s a concerning situation.”

The boy put his head down, and slowly walked to his next class.

A rightward shift, especially among boys

At The Global Learning Collaborative, a high school situated in the deep-blue Upper West Side of Manhattan, students reacted to Trump’s victory with a mix of fear, ambivalence — and support.

More than 70% of the school’s students are Latino, and many expressed alarm over Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. But there was still a sizable number of students who supported the Republican candidate during a mock election held during a Wednesday morning assembly: 136 students voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, while 70 supported Trump.

Junior Alix Torres said she has undocumented relatives and worries about his promise to .

“I woke up kind of angry this morning,” Torres said, noting that she helped persuade some family members to vote for Harris. “I hope he hears the public and chooses to not go through with that. We built this country.”

Others at The Global Learning Collaborative said they supported Trump or didn’t have a firm opinion of him; nearly all were under 10 years old during his first presidency.

Senior Sara Otero, who is 18, voted for the first time on Tuesday, casting a ballot for the former president. A devout Christian, Otero said she believed Trump would preserve religious liberty, though she hadn’t followed the election closely.

“I wasn’t as educated as I wish I was on the whole thing,” she said.

Harris decisively won New York City, but . Civics teacher Martin Gloster said he has seen a rightward shift in political attitudes in his classroom.

“I think teenage boys are really attracted to that strongman presence,” he said.

Gloster said he has struggled with teaching contemporary politics, including the presidential debate in which Trump Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs. In a class that discussed the debate, one student had faced an arduous journey emigrating from Guatemala, while others were more sympathetic to Trump.

“It’s difficult because obviously I play it down the middle — Trump is just a different thing,” Gloster said. “I’m learning on the fly. I don’t have all the answers.”

Taking lessons from Gore’s 2000 concession speech

When Reid Stuart arrived for his first class on Wednesday, he had three goals for students: Give space to process this huge political moment, impart tools to – and watch Al Gore’s concession speech from 2000.

“It’s an incredible speech, by a Tennessean, after a tense moment that calls for unity,” said Stuart, who teaches at Crosstown High School, a diverse public charter school in Memphis, Tennessee. “It feels relevant.”

His students in AP Human Geography settled into class, some joking with each other about the election and others speaking somberly.

Before watching , Stuart asked: What did his students expect from a conceding presidential candidate?

“To show respect to the other candidate.” “To show respect for the system.” “To actually concede,” students chimed in.

Stuart then asked, “If you are Al Gore, how are you feeling?”

“Cheated.” “Mad.” “Unaccepting of loss.” “Bitter.”

Gore, a Democrat, gave his speech more than a month after the 2000 Election Day and after .

Stuart asked his students what they thought of Gore’s delivery and message.

“I think he was being sarcastic,” said one student. “Like you could tell he didn’t really believe what he was saying, and felt like he should have won, but he still called for unity and respect.”

As other students in the room nodded in agreement, Stuart said: “This is a hallmark of a free and fair election, that the person who lost, can get up there and offer a unifying message, even if he is bitter. Right?”

He noted that later Wednesday. “I encourage you to watch it,” he told students. “See if she has the same message of unification and moving forward, even though you can guarantee she is feeling deeply about the loss.”

An election that turned on grocery prices and utility bills

Philadelphia social studies teacher Charlie McGeehan prepared for every election outcome – but, he admitted to his students Wednesday morning, “this is not what I expected.”

When he went to bed Tuesday night before midnight, McGeehan had anticipated explaining to the juniors and seniors in his classes about how long vote counting can take. About how we might not know the outcome of the election for several days. About the role deep-blue Philadelphia would play in deciding the election.

By the time he woke on Wednesday, that plan was moot. So, he figured, let’s just give the students — many of whom had spent long hours working the polls the day prior — space to decompress.

Together, they combed through the election results guided by students’ questions like “How was the polling yesterday so surprising?” “Which state did the race ultimately come down to?” and “Does Kamala Harris have any path to winning at all?”

To that last question, McGeehan was straightforward: “No, she doesn’t.”

Many of McGeehan’s students at the Academy at Palumbo are first- or second-generation Americans or immigrants. On notecards, students laid out their more personal fears, ones they didn’t necessarily want to share with the class.

“As a woman and a child of an immigrant, I’m honestly scared” read one. “I saw a post saying how Trump pledged to launch mass deportation… which makes me feel like not researching more because of how much more sick stuff I might read,” said another.

One said “I feel great because Trump’s [positions] align with what I want. Especially with the issues of censorship, grocery prices, and utility bills.”

‘Kind of a very depressing day’

Nehemiah Legrand tried to eat dinner Tuesday but couldn’t finish. She was glued to her phone. She was up until 3 a.m.

The 13-year-old student at Enlace Academy, a pre-K-8 school in the International Marketplace area of Indianapolis, is an American citizen by birth whose parents are legally living in the country. The family fled Haiti after her older brother was kidnapped in 2020 amid the country’s political turmoil.

Still, Trump’s campaign rhetoric around immigration scared Nehemiah – and made her fear that her family would be deported.

“I just feel like today — it doesn’t feel normal,” she said, sitting in the school’s hallway on Wednesday, looking out the window at the rain. “People are not talkative or none of that. It’s very, very strange. It’s kind of a very depressing day. Because everyone just doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, and you can tell everyone is stressed.”

The presidential election has over her and her classmates at the school, where many students come from Latin America and Haiti. At this school, students have to grow up fast. Many carry trauma from their immigration to the United States, said lead social worker Hailey Butchart.

Now, students like Nehemiah are preparing for what the next four years with Trump — whose platform includes deploying “the largest deportation operation in American history” — will mean for them.

“A lot of the students I speak with have had a family member that has been deported, and they live with that fear as well,” Butchart said.

The power of social media in elections

On the morning after Election Day, Zy’Asia Weathers rolled over in bed to grab her phone on a nearby nightstand and scrolled through TikTok.

But instead of seeing videos of makeup reviews or the latest trends, Zy’Asia’s feed was filled with women and girls crying about the outcome of Tuesday’s election and the potential impact on female reproductive rights.

“People were even saying, like, very vague things, like, just thinking the worst of the worst,” added Zy’Asia, 17, a senior at KIPP Newark Collegiate Academy.

Throughout the school day Wednesday, Zy’Asia and her peers talked about other videos they saw, like people celebrating former president Donald Trump’s reelection and others questioning what his victory would mean for the nation.

Zy’Asia is also the president of her school’s Student Government Association, and on Wednesday, the group met to discuss the presidential outcomes. Yanibel Feliz, the advisor of the group, walked students through an exercise to discuss the election process, the outcome, and the effect of social media.

Some students said they were shocked about Trump’s victory because they had seen much support for Harris on social media.

“Sometimes, social media might paint a picture of how elections will go,” said Trinity Douglas, a junior at the school, during class. “But it has a big effect on our generation.”

‘I’m afraid what will happen to my family’

The icebreaker in Joel Snyder’s government classes on Wednesday was to respond to the prompt: “I am feeling … because …”

The responses were wide-ranging and included students who were enthusiastic about the election outcome and those who were disappointed the U.S. would not, after all, elect a woman as president.

In the few minutes they were given, students took pencil to paper and wrote that they were “shocked” to hear how well Trump did with Latinos, “furious” at what they saw as sexism in the results, and “concerned” that America had once again elected a man whose flaws and felony convictions are, by now, well known.

Some answers hit closer to home. “I am feeling uneasy,” one student wrote, “because I’m afraid what will happen to my family who are undocumented.”

Standing at the front of his class at Ánimo Pat Brown Charter High School in the Florence-Firestone neighborhood of South Los Angeles, the teacher reminded his students that whether or not they are U.S. citizens, they have “the duty to be the protectors of democracy and of each other.” Snyder teaches about 140 students across five government classes, including one AP course. Of the roughly 600 students enrolled at Ánimo Pat Brown, almost all of them are Hispanic — their families hailing from Mexico, Guatemala, and elsewhere in Latin America.

Snyder also asked his students to write down one issue that they care about and how they think Trump’s election might impact it. The students chose abortion rights, the economy, constitutional norms, and, again and again, immigration. They shared their fears of mass deportations and stories of family members who had waited years for green cards they may never get.

“My main concern is how, even despite being a citizen, I still won’t be protected because my parents are immigrants,” Natalie, 17, a student in Snyder’s AP U.S. Government and Politics class, told Chalkbeat.

This was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Georgia Panel Votes to Cleanse Teacher Lesson Plans as School Culture Wars Rage

Ross Williams — Sun, 18 Jun 2023 12:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

“Words matter” – that’s what several of the dozen or so educators and parents gathered in a downtown Atlanta boardroom had to say Thursday in a bid to persuade the Georgia Professional Standards Commission not to change the state’s rules for training K-12 teachers.

The commission had on its agenda a slew of proposed revisions, removing words like “diversity” in favor of less politically fraught verbiage like “differences.”

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For example, one change for elementary school educators would call on them to get to know the “unique contexts of children and families,” rather than their “diverse cultural contexts” under the previous rules.

But the speakers’ words did not sway the commissioners, who voted unanimously to approve the changes without discussion.

“History remembers white supremacists,” shouted one speaker as the commissioners voted.

Commission Chair Brian Sirmans said the changes came at the request of the University System of Georgia and are intended to clarify language that had picked up unintended negative meanings over the years.

“These proposed rule amendments are not intended to redefine or remove the care preparation providers place on meeting students’ needs or prescribe the way (education preparation providers) choose to meet the program standards,” he said. “We still expect EPPs to prepare educators who are well-equipped to address the learning needs of all students that they may encounter and who are well-prepared to meet the students where they are within a positive and welcoming learning environment.”

But speakers including Sarah Hunt-Blackwell, First Amendment policy advocate with the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, said they view the changes as more than a mere swapping of words.

“I’d like to remind the commission, most of you educators, that words matter,” she said. “As such, we cannot be simplistic in believing that these amendments merely replace one word with another. Changing language does change intent. Replacing the word ‘diverse’ with words like ‘different’ and ‘unique’ implies that there is a norm, a sameness, which excludes those who do not fit in.”

Ruth M. Youn, second-generation Chinese-Taiwanese-American writer and parent who lives in metro Atlanta, said she felt like she did not fit in at school as a child. Although her teachers were well-educated and her schools were well-resourced, she said her heritage, language and physical appearance were not welcome and her peoples’ history in the U.S. was never discussed.

“I was not only minoritized, but I de facto learned to adopt negative mentalities towards communities different from mine,” she said. “There’s a pervasive misconception that teaching about diversity perpetuates racism and divisiveness in the classroom. I argue that by pretending that diversity does not exist, by not equipping educators to teach in a culturally sustaining way, we inevitably create entire cohorts of educators and therefore student populations who are uninformed, ill-informed, and potentially racist, even if they do not realize it.”

Christopher Andrews, a DeKalb County educator who has worked in social studies and science classrooms in middle and high schools, said his latest assignment was in Georgia’s most diverse middle school, and his diversity, equity and inclusion training came in handy to help him make connections with children from different religious and social backgrounds.

“A lack of intentional DEI training would have left me vastly unprepared to serve students from diverse backgrounds and ability levels, ultimately ignoring the essence of who they are and failing to equip them for the real world around them,” he said.

The changes, which are set to go into effect July 1, would apply to positions including elementary education and reading and literacy specialists, who teach up to grade 12, as well as educational leaders like principals and superintendents.

They follow another controversial change last month, which stripped the definition of diversity from teacher training rules.

Some teachers complained not only about the changes, but about what they described as a streamlined process that skipped over opportunities for them to weigh in. Commissioners said they received a record amount of emails about last month’s changes, but admitted to ignoring or filtering them.

Others said requiring in-person access to a mostly-digital meeting in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday prevented many interested parties from weighing in.

“As I stand here speaking in front of you all and those who are with us virtually, there are parents here across the city of Atlanta, across metro Atlanta, who cannot be here because they’re picking up their children from summer camp, from summer programs, from summer school,” said Jason B. Allen, national organizing director for the National Parents Union.

Fights over CRT, DEI

School board meetings across the country have seen heated debates in recent years over so-called wokeness in the classroom as some white parents accuse teachers of trying to make students feel guilty about their race.

In 2021, the Cherokee County School District hired Cecelia Lewis, a Maryland principal, for a new position as an administrator focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. But Lewis, who is Black, would from the offer after a group of white parents rose up against the decision, with many arguing without evidence that Lewis planned to bring critical race theory to the county.

Once a niche academic term, critical race theory has become a catch-all for lessons on race that put U.S. policy in a negative light or make connections between past discrimination and current inequality.

Following the first wave of outcry, the Georgia Board of Education a resolution against a list of opinions members found unpopular, including that the United States is a racist country or that anyone ought to be made to feel bad for things people belonging to their race did in the past.

Last year, Gov. Brian Kemp bills aimed at keeping ideas like critical race theory out of schools and strengthening parents’ rights to review classroom materials.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Education ruled that proposed book bans in Forsyth County may have created a environment for some students and ordered the district to come up with a plan to fix things.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on and .

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